


grateful

by whiskeycherrypie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguous Relationships, Coda, Episode Related, Episode: s14e13 Lebanon, Feelings Realization, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Slash, Schmoop, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Sharing a Bed, Suspicions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 02:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeycherrypie/pseuds/whiskeycherrypie
Summary: John says something to Mary. Sam and Dean pass out in bed together.The timing couldn't be worse.*Now with chapter 2. Mary asks questions. So does Sam.Picks up from 14x13.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ~~I really waffled about the tagging and in the end I went both with the & and / tags for Sam and Dean. I view this as pre-slash, but it's all very ambiguous and some incorrect assumptions are made by Mary.~~ I removed the gen tag. The second chapter makes it a wholly wincest territory :)

After John's gone, they all get spectacularly drunk.

 

The first couple of drinks are needed just to tell Cas what happened and then they just don't stop and for once, even Sam doesn't feel the need to.

 

Something inside him is completely unraveled, he can feel that, and he kinda hopes the whiskey induced oblivion he's headed into will tide him over until he can figure out how to put himself back together.

 

Dean probably shouldn't drink so much, lose control that way with Michael in his head, but fuck if Sam's going to stop him. They're slumped at the library table together, bottles scattered like a little forest around them. Mom and Cas are further upfront and Mary has her head propped up on her hand, listening intently to something Cas is quietly telling her. It's some shit about time and souls and apparently it's a long story. Sam doesn't know how she can stand to hear about it, hear all about the machinery of the universe that put them in this shit spot, but it seems to be helping her, so Sam leaves them to it, too.

 

Minutes tick past in the dim room. Sam starts to lose focus.

 

“You gon' be okay?” Dean slurs next to him.

 

“Eventually,” is what Sam manages to squeeze out of himself in reply. He doesn't bother asking Dean, not because he doesn't care, God knows he does, but because he thinks he already knows the answer anyway.

 

“I think I kinda wanna go to bed,” Dean says a while later, all quiet and grudging, like he's admitting to some big secret. Sam puts some effort into making sure his legs will hold him, stands up, swaying, grabs Dean by the shoulder.

 

“Come on then.”

 

They shuffle their way out of the library quietly, their departure either unnoticed (by Mary at least) or ignored. Sam's entered a stage where he can say he is somewhat numbed to it all, but can't properly enjoy it because there's buzzing in his head and walking is really, really an annoyance.

 

When they make it to the bedroom door – actually, _a_ bedroom door, Sam's a little fuzzy on where they are exactly and where they were headed – he leans on the door frame, tongue all sticky and heavy with whiskey.

 

“It's just... too much.”

 

“I know,” Dean grunts from somewhere near Sam's shoulder.

 

Then it's dark, a plunging mattress underneath him and a warmth all along his back, like a comfort that he has forgotten all about and sorely missed.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Mary registers when she wakes is the pounding in her head. The second thing she registers is what John had said when they were alone, asking about the boys.

 

It comes to her with clarity that is cruel in the face of her hangover. As though during her whiskey soaked sleep, what she didn't want and couldn't understand worked its way through her mind and handed itself to her on a silver platter.

 

“ _So, the boys. They're good, huh?”_

 

“ _Yeah. Yeah, they are, they... you did well.”_

 

“ _I gotta say, where I'm at, it was kinda touch and go for a while whether Dean would just hang it up and run off with Sam.”_

 

“ _Really? I thought it was only when Sam's girl, Jessica...”_

 

“ _I don't know. Dean wasn't doing too well. So they're like this now? This is their home? No girlfriends, normal life...?”_

 

“ _Not lately as far as I know. It's the life. And there's so much going on.”_

 

“ _And you don't-”_

 

“ _What?”_

 

“ _Are they... never mind. Tell me what you have been doing.”_

 

She sits, stomach heaving threateningly. She blames it on the hangover.

 

She let that go, what John was asking, the intent in his eyes as he watched her answer his question, like he was looking for a crack, for an answer. She let it go then because she just wanted to see him, kiss him, allow herself the comfort of everything she had been so sorely missing.

 

But now he's gone again and she's sleeping in a cold bed and realizing what it was he wanted to find out.

 

She wants a shower and coffee and maybe more whiskey. It's too much.

 

* * *

 

Sam always sleeps like a log when he's really, really drunk. It's handy if he wants to knock himself out, but the mornings are a pain of full bladder and aching muscles and his head feeling like it's just a sponge that needs to be wrung out to start functioning again. Today is no different and he wakes, eyes still closed, taking stock of just how bad it is. Yeah, his right arm is pretty much numb and he needs to piss badly and that's not to mention the headache slowly creeping up into his temples.

 

He's also painfully aware of everything that happened the night before.

 

Shifting slightly, he comes to a stop and his eyes fly open, squinting into the dimness of the room. Dean's room. Huh. And the reason his arm is numb is because Dean's lying on it.

 

So maybe he's not aware of _everything_ that happened. But it figures, he thinks, that seeing Dad would send him and Dean into some old habits, like sharing a bed, because that was the norm on the road until they got too big to really fit. The bunker beds aren't the smallest, but Sam still tries to catalog if he's about to fall on his ass over the edge. They're spooning, kinda, Sam's arm trapped under Dean, chest to back. They didn't make it under the covers.

 

Dean wakes then, grunting and lifting himself up just enough that Sam can get his arm back, then flopping onto his back.

 

“'Time is it?”

 

Sam squints at Dean's alarm clock. His headache is just getting worse. “Half past nine.”

 

“What are you doing here?” Dean asks, voice sleepy, like he only just noticed this isn't how they usually wake up.

 

“No idea,” Sam admits. “I think I just passed out.”

 

“How do you like the memory foam?”

 

Sam snorts, burying his head into the pillow, making himself comfortable. Bathroom can wait for a little while yet. It's comfortable here and not because of the mattress. It's Dean's space, smells like him, feels like him and there is still, even at his age and after everything they've been through some basic, instinctual part of Sam's brain that relaxes when Dean is near.

 

It's nice, having privacy. Having their own rooms. But it's also nice to be close.

 

“You up for breakfast?”

 

* * *

 

The trip for coffee takes her by Dean's room and she pauses when she sees the door ajar, peeking in.

 

They're both there. Nearly too big for the bed, dressed, on top of the covers, but undeniably together, Sam draped all along Dean's back, holding him.

 

They don't wake.

 

* * *

 

“Oh.”

 

“What?”

 

Dean hands him a piece of paper and the words take some time to penetrate Sam's insufficiently caffeinated brain. But then they do.

 

Mom needs space, again. He can't say it doesn't hurt after last night, after _everything,_ but hell, he was her husband. Seeing John put them all through the wringer and he and Dean were the ones to cause it and then come back saying John needed to disappear again or they all would.

 

“I thought... ” he says. Dean pours him some more coffee, dropping heavily onto the seat opposite of Sam's. “I mean, she's done this before, but I don't know, I thought this time it wouldn't be like that. I thought this time we could deal with it together, you know?”

 

“Yeah.” Dean's voice is all gravelly and Sam looks at him, feeling both very fond and very sad at the sight of his brother's mussed hair and puffy eyes. “Listen, this puts us back to square one on the Michael front, but do you think we could take it easy today?”

 

Dean, actually asking for time off. As if Sam could say no to that.

 

“Of course, yeah. If you want. You wanna watch a movie or go for a drive or something?”

 

“Maybe, yeah. Either's good. Listen, Sammy...”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Thanks. For everything. And hey, don't look at me like that, this is not my deathbed thank you, okay? This is a normal, stayin' alive thank you.”

 

Sam nods, swallowing hard. He's grateful too. He's grateful for Dean most of all.

 

Dean doesn't need to hear it, not right now anyway, because Sam's said it before. But he will do ever better than that. He's going to show him. Get rid of Michael. Get rid of anything that comes after.

 

And he's going to stay.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sam emerges on the other side of that clusterfuck sort of... rearranged. Like the pieces of himself he had to put together got stacked up differently than before.

 

Some anger is missing, it seems. That's just as well. But that's not the main thing, no, the biggest piece that is all clunky inside his chest is Dean.

 

No matter what had happened before, Dean always sat neatly slotted within Sam. When he was gone – dead, in Hell – it was like being gutted, empty. Incomplete.

 

But this is new. He looks at Dean and feels something apart from the radiating contentment that should be there. Up is down, left is right, and Sam is not mad at Dean, he's not annoyed, he's not resentful, he's not anything _bad_ he can think of, but he's not comfortable either.

 

They're getting somewhere with Michael, maybe. Soul magic, obscure stuff that doesn't offer any kind of _a-ha!_ solution, but might end up working anyway if they dig deep enough. So they're buckled down, researching. Sam should get some sort of a reward for how well he's handling this 3rd century Latin dialect.

 

Dean should get a reward for the sandwich that lands next to Sam's elbow at some point. He looks up, blinking, just in time for his stomach to growl loudly.

 

“Thanks,” he mumbles to Dean, feeling his cheeks heat up.

 

“Yeah I couldn't hear myself think with that soundtrack,” Dean says, gruff but smiling, sitting down with his own plate and making space for it in between his own notes and book stacks.

 

It's delicious, the sandwich. Crispy and buttery and full of veggies and cheese. Sam scarfs down half of it in a couple of huge bites and then forces himself to slow down when his stomach wobbles.

 

“'S good,” he tells Dean.

 

“You want some kale juice with that?”

 

It's just a joke, but Sam pauses, putting the sandwich down. “It wasn't funny. I... sure, no coffee, eating food that preferably still has dirt on it, that's hilarious. But you wanna talk about how that _me_ said that family is a distraction?”

 

“Wasn't you,” Dean shakes his head like it's a done deal, chewing slowly.

 

“Yeah, it was. Could have been. It was me, without you.”

 

“You've been without me before, Sammy, and you were fine, more or less.”

 

That forces a startled laugh out of Sam. “No, not like that, and no, I wasn't. Why do you think I...”

 

Dean looks at him, face open for now, but the beginnings of a frown already forming around the corners of his mouth as he stops eating. “Are you going somewhere with this?”

 

Sam pauses. Is he? All that he's been trying to do was deal with that strange unsettled feeling that just won't leave him be.

 

And thinking about himself without Dean only makes it worse. Way, way worse.

 

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I'm not, sorry. It just... I didn't like it.”

 

Dean wipes at his mouth, getting rid of that frown right along with stray crumbs.

 

“Yeah, me neither... When I looked myself up, it was bad. I barely skimmed the surface, sure, but I get the feeling not all the dead bodies I left behind were monsters. Lot of it looked like collateral damage.”

 

Sam can only nod in silent acknowledgment. _I'm good with who I am. I'm good with who you are._

 

“Did it...” he starts, then hesitates. He doesn't know how to ask this.

 

“Yeah?” Dean nudges him on and Sam sits back for a second. The bunker is quiet, it's just the two of them for the moment, and Dean seems willing to talk, as much as he ever is. Sam feels the pieces slide together a bit more comfortably.

 

“Do you feel different?”

 

Dean stares at him for a second, then pulls back visibly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don't know that I've like... processed. I don't know. If I didn't have Michael all up my custard it would probably be different, yeah? But we saw dad. It was good, but just, not enough.”

 

Oh. The pieces are back to poking Sam in the ribs, misplaced disappointment flooding him. What was he expecting, for Dean to say _I look at you differently, I feel something for you that I-_

 

Hold up. Shock squeezes Sam's insides with nearly physical force and he fumbles to push his chair away and get up, get away just for a second.

 

“Sammy?”

 

He ignores Dean calling after him, retreating instead. His first instinct is to go shut himself in his room, but as walks – flees – his brain comes halfway back online and he heads to one of the storage rooms instead, having absolutely nothing to do there but wanting some sort of a alibi for running away like that.

 

Door slamming behind him, Sam leans against a cabinet, fingers digging into the shelves, head hanging low.

 

What the hell is wrong with him?

 

He starts running through the supernatural possibilities for his freakout, but deep down he knows he's lying to himself. This is no curse, no case of timelines merging, no bout of paranoia. This is just his own head, cracking after seeing dad.

 

Problem is, he's pretty sure he made peace with it. The things they've said, that was between him and dad, and between Dean and dad. He shouldn't be thinking about Dean differently just because they both got some closure.

 

He wants to hole up somewhere and hide and finally figure out what's going on with him, and ideally fucking _fix_ it, but guilt drives him back to the library soon enough. He needs to get back to work, because ridding Dean of Michael is priority.

 

Dean, mercifully, accepts his mumbled excuse about thinking this or that tome could help and wanting to go find it right away, but Sam can feel his gaze lingering long after.

 

He wonders, for the first time, when did he learn to be so aware of Dean watching him.

 

* * *

 

Mary calls the next day. She calls Sam's cell and he picks up, nodding to Dean to get his attention.

 

“Hey, mom.”

 

“ _Hi, Sam. How are you doing?”_

 

She's so carefully neutral. Privately, Sam thinks their relationship would improve if she let on more, the good and the bad both. They're all adults and it just doesn't work when she plays at protecting them from her distinct lack of sainthood.

 

“Okay, we're fine, we're uh, hitting the books pretty hard and I think we're getting somewhere.”

 

“ _Good. You need some help?”_

 

“Well, it's kinda all hands on deck, yeah.”

 

“ _Okay. Sam, can I ask you something? Is Dean around?”_

 

He doesn't know why he does it. Dean is right there, watching him, close enough that he probably hears tidbits of the other side of the conversation, catching a word here and there, getting the context.

 

“No, not right now. What's up?”

 

There's a pause, nothing but the tinny static of a call, then a clink that's probably a glass being put down on the table.

 

“ _Seeing John... I'm thinking a lot about you boys, when you were kids. The way you... the way Dean was there for you.”_

 

Okay.

 

“Yeah, he was. He always looked out for me.”

 

He meets Dean's eyes and holds the gaze. That's no secret. It's not a secret that Sam knows and appreciates it, but a muscle jumps in Dean's jaw anyway, like he can't stand to hear it said so casually.

 

“ _John left you on your own a lot, didn't he?”_

 

“Yeah, he did. Some hunts took him away for a long time. It wasn't... it wasn't ideal.”

 

“ _Sam...”_

 

He waits, pulse speeding up. Dammit, Mary sounds wrecked.

 

“ _Sam, when you and Dean were on your own... growing up.”_

 

Dean moves quietly towards him. Sam lets it happen, let's Dean's fingers wrap around his own where he's holding the phone and drag it away from his ear and press the speaker button.

 

He doesn't announce himself. Sam knew he wouldn't.

 

“ _Were things alright? Between you two I mean?”_

 

Her voice is thinner than Sam thinks he's ever heard it, near breaking. It twists the seemingly innocent question into something else.

 

“Well, like I said, Dean took care of me. And later on, you know, I would like to think I started repaying him for that.”

 

“ _But what does that_ mean _?”_ It bursts out of her, frustration audible. _“I love you, Sam, I really do, and I love Dean. But sometimes you both scare me a little.”_

 

“Why?” Now he's raising his voice too. Dean puts a hand on his shoulder and they both stare down at the phone.

 

“ _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just I... I worry. I wasn't there. And John wasn't there as much as he could have. And I saw you the other night and...”_

 

Dean's hand tightens on Sam's shoulder.

 

“Saw us the other night?” Sam repeats.

 

“ _Forget it. I'm really sorry, I think seeing John was too much for me. I'll... we'll keep in touch, okay?”_

 

“Wait-”

 

The call disconnects and Sam sits back, huffing in frustration. “What the hell?” He looks up at Dean, the sad look he sees on his face instantly shutting his anger down. He puts his own hand over Dean's,giving him what is hopefully a reassuring squeeze.

 

“I know what she means,” Dean says, so resigned. He even smiles at Sam a little, one of his heartbreaking _I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders_ smiles. “I've heard it before. Even from Lisa actually, that wasn't fun. I just didn't think _mom_ would.”

 

“Heard what?” He hates that his voice is all wobbly, mouth drying. He wants the answer and dreads it at the same time.

 

“Sometimes people think we're too close. Like, Becky the slash fan kind of close.”

 

Sam's thoughts grind to a screeching halt. All he can do is stare up at Dean, at the sadness in his eyes, the self-deprecating twist of his mouth.

 

And Dean's right. They've heard it before. From motel clerks, from the Supernatural books fans.

 

But _Lisa_?

 

And _mom_?

 

And... and worst of all, now Sam knows. Now he knows what changed. He figures it out then, in those silently ticking seconds of Dean's hand on his shoulder, the warmth of him bracketing where Sam's seated. The piece inside him that didn't fit, that was so unfamiliar was exactly _this_. Want. Want for more.

 

“The morning she left,” he says, hearing his own voice from somewhere far away, “we fell asleep in your room that night.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean releases his shoulder and finally steps away.

 

He remembers enjoying waking up there, an undercurrent of pleasure beneath the killer hangover. He also remembers walking out of Dean's bedroom and not giving it a second thought. The next couple of days were all _dad dad dad_ and then it was back to their archangel problem, until he had a moment to stop and look inside himself and find everything a little stilted.

 

“What if it's true?”

 

“If it's _true_? Seriously?” Dean snaps. “Do you remember me perving on you when you were a kid? Was I fucking badtouching you since there were no adults around, like ever?”

 

It's like a physical blow, the look of betrayal on Dean's face. “No,” Sam snaps right back. “Shut up, Dean, of course not. I just mean... I don't want to leave this life. Our lives. You said the exact same thing to me not a week ago, so don't get mad at me for it.”

 

“And _that_ -” Dean points at the phone, “is how you interpret it?”

 

“Not until two minutes ago I didn't. But something is different, Dean, I don't know if you feel it too.”

 

Dean's expression shifts, morphing into something sharper. “Is that what you freaked out about yesterday?”

 

Sam swallows hard. This conversation is seriously getting away from them and he wants nothing more than to drop it, bury it, go back to saving Dean. “Yeah, I guess. I didn't get what I was... yeah.”

 

“I can't believe this,” Dean sighs, running his hands over his face.

 

“I'm sorry,” Sam offers. And he probably should be sorry, because nowhere in this conversation, during his stilted confession of things he himself doesn't understand, was there a hint that Dean might feel the same way Sam's just discovered.

 

The silence stretches until Dean moves, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the bar, two glasses with it, sitting down next to Sam. Not on the other side of the table as they do when they're alone, but actually next to him, body turned towards him. He pours, they drink.

 

“Being in the bunker messes with me a little, I think. Living here, having a home here, I mean,” Dean says, voice level, eyes not meeting Sam's.

 

Sam tries to follow and fails.

 

“When we were on the road all the time, we were constantly looking over our shoulders, you know? I never really stopped being a hunter, not out there in the world. But here, I can drop it sometimes. Here I can cook and watch the game and...”

 

Dean tosses his drink back, shaking his head. “I can't even say this, Sammy, jesus, it sounds so dumb when I actually say it out loud.”

 

“Just try,” Sam asks. His heart is fluttering in his chest with familiar weakness.

 

“This is _our home_. I don't ever think of wanting something else. This is it for me and sometimes I don't know...”

 

Sam gets it, then. It's like _you and me against the world_ , except they're just not careless kids driving down the highway at night (not always anyway), they're life-partners. They're brothers, family, hunters, they do nearly everything together, they will do everything _for_ each other.

 

Sam drinks his whiskey. This will take time to unravel.

 

“Dean, you know what? We will figure this out. We will get Michael out of you and then we will go on and we will make time for ourselves and see what's what. But before we let this go, I just want us to be on the same page about one thing.”

 

Dean's grip on his empty glass is white-knuckled. Sam goes on. “It doesn't matter what anyone says about it. It's not – it would not be – wrong. Okay?”

 

He watches Dean get up and move to his customary spot on the other side of the table. He pours them another drink, that little rueful smile back on his lips.

 

“I disagree, Sammy, I think it would be plenty wrong.” Sam looks down. It hurts; maybe it should. But then Dean goes on.

 

“Thing is, I just don't know if that's enough to stop us.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> moral of the story is if you talk to sam and dean long enough about Doing The Incest they might just, you know, do it.
> 
> Thank you for following along with my post-Lebanon exploration!

**Author's Note:**

> [whiskeycherrypie.tumblr.com](https://whiskeycherrypie.tumblr.com)


End file.
